SEVALITH
REGENTS: COUNTEX OUBLIA AND COUNTEX OSCURA
The blood-drinking socialites of Sevalith do not know our word for vampire, but their kingdom is kept midnight-dark, and the living do not last long there.
One of the OTHERWORLD's longest reigning nations, Sevalith drips in blood and is bound by curses. For as long as Sevalith has existed within the wheel, it has been a study in opposites - brutal cathedrals wedged and stacked like coffins in geometric shapes dot the landscape, concealing a larval, soft people within. Hideous sharp-toothed night creatures don meters of sumptuous fabric and crown themselves in jewels, bedecking their fierceness with a haunting beauty.
The ancient ruling class of Sevalith have collected the wealth of ages within their dark doors, sitting like dragons upon millennia of hoarded treasures that grow dusty and unspent.
Meanwhile, Sevalith pulses under dark skies, the ebb and flow of blood and secrets in the circulatory streets. With treasure nearly worthless and blood always in supply, the Sevalithi political landscape is a minefield of intricate curses, bonds and favors. Each and every member of their ruling class find themself inextricably bound to every other.
Externally, Sevalithi diplomacy is typically patient and reasonable, if not a little slow -- long life spans are not known for fostering haste among cultures - - but does share a long-running rivalry with the kingdom of AVALON. Where Avalon is a kingdom of bright magic and virtue, Sevalith is a kingdom of darkness and blood, in which beauty is merely a lark to festoon the deadly. The thrones of each nation consider themselves in a chilly but tense peace, but nearer to the borders it is said the cultures illicitly intermingle, each naturally intrigued by a taste of their opposite.
Assassins of Sevalith are said to be some of the finest anywhere, as undetectable as a bad dream, but the only currency Sevalith honors is favors, and it is wise to stay out of their tangled web. But their silence and skill can be a necessity, as the wide, cloudy plains between the cities of Sevalith hum with an eerie quiet. Perhaps any discord within the province is kept inside the heavy black walls -- or perhaps it is snuffed out quickly. Or perhaps it is an honest peace, borne of their age -- could a kingdom of the unaging learn to perhaps truly thrive among one another, given enough time to build?